The culminating, third concert will be a joint performance by the Bach Choir of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) and the Baldwin-Wallace College Choir performing Bach’s B-minor Mass. Forces will be greater than Bach intended, but that is an exception for music sponsored by the festival, which has prided itself since 1975 on adhering to lesser forces. Bethlehem’s Bach choir introduced the B-minor Mass to the U.S. in 1900 and is celebrating a truly notable anniversary this spring—its 100th.

On the Friday, after a brass introit triumphantly sounded across the countryside from Marting Hall Tower, the first concert begins at 4:00 p.m. with Bach’s Motet Der Geist hilft and two of his cantatas, No’s 32 and 154, all sandwiched between Handel (Concerto Grosso, op. 6/1 and first Coronation Anthem). The cantatas use the same Biblical text, which is interpreted in the earlier cantata as a love duet between Jesus and a soul in Paradise, and in the later one as a lament over Jesus’ sudden, ascending exit, but also as a celebration of his embracing love.

Soloists Tamara Matthews and Christòpheren Nomura are the celestial lovers in Cantata 32. Cantata 154’s soloists are Jennifer Lane (mezzo), Kevin Deas (bass) and Stanford Olsen, who sings the extended, emotional tenor recitative enflaming the soul to meet his Lord. Leipzig’s St. Thomas’s cantor, Ullrich Böhme, is the attraction for the evening concert. He’ll play music of his famed predecessor on the three-manual, Janke tracker (1973-74) at United Methodist Church in Berea—38 ranks arranged in a splendid baroque case.

Sunday brings an all-Bach service to the Methodist Church, which will likely put to use its precious two-manual tracker by Charles Ruggles (1986). And at the final concert of the festival jazz legend Dave Brubeck and his quartet will take Bach’s most memorable tunes and turn them into something, well, jazzy.